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The Same Way
Posted 12:18 PM, May 31, 2005 |
you are sitting there, taking
it on faith that you have sat there
before, like assuming
you have laid next to me because
of the indent of the down
pillow. you still hold your fork
the same way, the way
i jokingly described once as being
“like a savage cannibal,”
to which you were not amused, much
as you aren’t when i repeated it just now.
you still build the same,
stone after stone, placing each one
the same way, time after time. the mortar
is thick and musty and squeezes like peanut
butter between two pieces of stale bread.
our apartment is cold and bare, the slow
flame of the fireplace in the north wall
pushing heat into the room like watercolors
seeping across a blank page. your shoes rest
on the welcome mat, burnished brown
and silver, the dull colors of yesterday’s memory.
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Oh, Oh, Oprah
Posted 8:50 AM, May 31, 2005 |
There was some conversation recently about Oprah and her blessed-or-damned book club, depending on your point of view, and then just today, via Bookslut, there’s a whole piece over at Bookninja about Oprah and the homogenization of literature and how unsettling Oprah’s power over what gets published may be.
I’m not taking much of a stance here.
Heather writes, “I guess what sticks in my craw is that so much of the virulence directed against Oprah from the lit-crit crowd seems founded in an attitude of aesthetic exclusivity.” So I’m sort of guilty of this, even going to the trouble of buying an older edition of Franzen’s The Corrections off eBay just so I could get one without the Oprah Book Club logo on it. Heather goes on to talk about how she used to stick copies of People magazine between books by Foucault and John Gardner. I guess it’s all the same.
But then, on the other hand, Marianne writes, “So, yes, the lit crit crowd is suspicious of Oprah, and with good reason. Is this suspicion based, in part, in snobbery? You bet.” This is essentially what Heather was saying - Marianne just seems to be acknowledging it, as if that makes it acceptable.
(I should point out that I’m writing about Heather and Marianne as if I have any idea who they are. I don’t.)
Maybe it is snobbery, and maybe, maybe that’s ok for some people, but no, not for me, I guess. I think I may have just decided how I feel about this, but I probably will change my mind.
I had a conversation a couple months back about Billy Collins, who I still maintain is a fantastic poet. One of the reasons I really like him, from a sort of philosophical point of view, is that his work is very accessible. As much as I might like William Butler Yeats, Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings, Wordsworth, Whitman, Ginsberg, and so on, a lot of their stuff is really difficult for most people, myself included. But I say, in response to people reading Collins (as if I spot them everywhere, on buses and sidewalks and stuff), I say, “At least they’re reading poetry.” I mean, it doesn’t hurt that Collins is actually good, and maybe I’d feel differently if they were reading teen angst poetry, but again, that’s just snobbery. I think my attitude is, or should be, still, “At least they’re reading poetry.”
So, if a bunch of middle-aged women are reading Oprah’s Book Club selections, at least they’re reading, right? And, secretly, I like a lot of the books Oprah picks, with One Hundred Years of Solitude being one of my favorites. I don’t know how else to get non-readers, or pop-fiction readers, to read a book like that other than to put it in Oprah’s hands.
Sure, she wields a lot of responsibility, but eh, I think it’s probably a fair trade.
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Two Unsettling Things
Posted 8:57 AM, May 27, 2005 |
1) When your RSS feeds start crossing over and linking to one another.
2) When you wake up in the morning and your beard is just a little damp.
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Kinko’s
Posted 3:10 PM, May 20, 2005 |
May 20, 2005
[Real Address Removed]
Kinko’s
8057 Wedgewood Lane N
Maple Grove, MN 55369-9412
To Whom It May Concern:
I visited your store on May 19, 2005 to have 4 Photoshop (.psd) images printed. I wanted 2 copies of each image printed on white cardstock. Given my choice of cardstock, I selected the bright white (the second “level” of white). The cashier/clerk wrote down the brightest “level” of white, which I didn’t bother to correct. She did, however, record the rest of my request accurately. She told me that the Photoshop images would first have to be converted to PDF files, and that there was a preposterous $9.95 “rendering fee” for that conversion. She did inform me that I could convert them myself in the business center (for which I would, of course, also be charged). Unfortunately, I was on a short break from my job and was unable to take the time to convert them myself, so I begrudgingly paid the $9.95 fee.
I’m curious, first of all, as to what I just paid $9.95 for. Was it for someone to open each image in Photoshop and then resave each image as a PDF? This isn’t even mentioning the fact that I fail to see the need to convert the files at all, since I created them in Photoshop and Photoshop prints files without any problem. However, I am aware that PDF is an “industry standard” for printing, but it hardly seems to offer any advantage in my case, especially when considering that I paid $9.95 to have 4 files converted.
In any event, the clerk called me when my job was complete, and I came by to pick it up. The first thing I noticed upon opening the envelope was that only 2 of the 4 images had been printed, and only one copy of each had been printed. I was 6 images short. I told the cashier, who brought the job slip to the assistant manager who had run the job in the first place. He apologized and printed 2 copies of each image. Unfortunately, he printed them double-sided. I then noticed that the 2 images that had been printed when I arrived were also double-sided.
I then told the assistant manager precisely what the cashier had written on the slip, which was precisely what I wanted (with the exception of the color of the cardstock). He then printed 2 copies of 4 images, all single-sided, on cardstock, which was (finally) precisely what I wanted.
In the process of completing my job, a total of 12 color prints (counting both sides) and 6 pieces of cardstock were completely wasted. In addition, I was called and told my job was complete and then had to stand and wait while they finished my job incorrectly and then started and finished the job from the beginning, correctly.
While I wasn’t explicitly charged for the wasted prints or the wasted cardstock, all your customers are implicitly charged for every error an employee makes that results in wasted material or time. So, in a sense, I was charged for the consistent, baffling errors made by your staff.
As a customer with numerous options for printing, copying, and mailing, I feel cheated at being asked to spend: $9.99 for a simple file conversion process, extra money to cover mistakes made by incompetent employees, and additional time while my job was completed.
By the time the entire process was finished, I was running late and so had no time to argue with the staff on hand in the store. Hence, this letter.
At the very least, I’d like some of my purchase price refunded to cover my inconvenience. Beyond that, I’ll leave it to you to decide what is an appropriate reaction to this situation.
Sincerely,
[Real Name Removed]
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Disclaimer, Nine Months Late
Posted 8:26 AM, May 20, 2005 |
When I was in my high school creative writing class, it became clear after taking the class for the 3rd time that the most important part of sharing your creative writing with any type of audience was providing a disclaimer about how much your work sucks, how you aren’t done with it yet, how it didn’t quite work just the way you want it to, and how, God, dear, please, God, don’t judge me on this because it isn’t even like I wrote it, but more some other version of me who inhabits my body when I feel the need to write, and if you associate my writing as any sort of personal expression of myself or what I may possibly think, well, dear God, you may as well just shoot me now, you fool.
Consider this to be yearofglad’s disclaimer for everything in the past and everything in the future.
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Cupid’s Parade
Posted 10:28 PM, May 19, 2005 |
when i was sixteen and you were seventeen,
we went to cupid’s parade, a bevy of exes
walking on the beach, a trail
of footprints sunk in the wake of high-
heeled shoes, flip-flops, keds, adidas.
you and i watched the sand around
each print shaping, turning into buildings,
small apartments, parents’ cars. this one,
this one here, an alarm clock; this woman
left behind a miniature ocean, a replica
of the one we’re standing beside.
we kept walking, trying to keep up
with cupid’s parade, the last in a long
line of people trailing around an outcropping,
the waves slowly eating our history
like glaciers scraping the roofs of our mouths.
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Render This
Posted 1:34 PM, May 19, 2005 |
Pf. I dropped some files off at Kinko’s to get them color- and laser-printed on some nice cardstock. The files were in Photoshop (.psd) format, a program which does allow printing. They, at Kinko’s, were all “Well, we’ll need to convert the files to PDF first, and for that there’s a $9.99 rendering fee.” What?
Seriously, screw. I mean, c’mon. See, I’m totally speechless, unable to form coherent sentences.
A “rendering fee”? I’m paying some guy to open the files in Photoshop and then print them to PDF Writer or something, and then print them (for which I’m also paying)? And let’s not forget that they could just print them from Photoshop - I mean, I don’t see why that won’t work.
I’ll tell them what to render…
When I pick up the prints and pay them.
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Tiny Ninja Theater
Posted 9:05 AM, May 19, 2005 |
Tiny Ninja Theater is putting on a production of Hamlet using, well, tiny plastic ninjas. The Seattle Weekly drops a review here. (And, all of this is courtesy of the fine folks at Bookslut.)
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13 Things Seen in a Recent Trip to Chicago
Posted 12:59 PM, May 17, 2005 |
the low-slung canvas chair
the turning ferris wheel embraced by train tracks
the bicycle chained to a wooden fence
the three men, two guitars and one microphone, in grant park
the three boys, sweatshirts two sizes too large, ears crimson with cold
the long stairway, the last steps covered with sand,
the movement of a windswept beach
the long slope of your face like a pause in a flipbook
the way she holds the umbrella so it only covers her,
my eyes squinting in the sun
the bust of tecumseh, headdress back and eyes forward,
varnished by oily fingertips
the man peeling potatoes for a st. patrick’s day parade,
the skins piling at his feet
the shadow of a baseball forgotten in a sandbox, the cool ellipse of sand
the wooden bones of two marionettes embracing on a small, plastic sofa
the cold loneliness of a rock outcropping in a frozen lake michigan
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Revisionist History
Posted 9:50 AM, May 16, 2005 |
i never got in that fight with you over
who was the best left-handed pitcher
of all time; i just went back and deleted
your candidate. i took his hall
of fame plaque and we’ve been using
it as a trivet since we got back together.
come to think of it, we never left one another,
mostly because i never got into that automobile
accident with your mother, all crunching
upholstery and dismissive looks.
she still speaks to us, although
she speaks to me only on holidays,
something i’m reticent to change.
and also, i never moved in with your best
friend’s older sister for that summer during
which we now never broke up,
that hot, sweaty summer,
and, like i said, even if i had moved
in with her, we never slept together.
i never asked you to marry me the next winter,
or, on second thought, i did, although
you said yes this time. i tried,
but i still couldn’t remove the resigned
look in your gray eyes.
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Insides
Posted 4:11 PM, May 13, 2005 |
i am my own unfunny universe,
all tourniquets and tarnished brass
inside. i am the marbled warble
of a muted trumpet, sad and wheezy,
out of breath from calling.
my long, spiral arms are turned
inside out, my body turning
like a centrifuge separating
sperm and eggs, putting me
back into my original shipping boxes.
my insides are breaking
into small pieces
and stuffing themselves into gaps
like filling in air pockets
in a christmas package. my body
is put into compartments
so i won’t sink at the first
sound of thunder
rolling on top of the cold
of the breathing moon,
with the first raindrop that hits
my abandoned planet.
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Architecture in Helsinki
Posted 9:05 AM, May 10, 2005 |
Architecture in Helsinki,
On your new CD, In Case We Die, Tracks 4 and 5, “Wishbone” and “Maybe You Can Owe Me,” are maybe the two most awesome pop songs to appear next to one another. They’re definitely my two most favorite songs in recent memory.
I think you need to use more instruments.
And it’s cool that you’re all playing the Turf Club in June. That will be fine.
Also, your website is cool because:
1) You can preview all the tracks from the new album, and
2) I think it gave me ADD.
Hal.
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My Alarm Clock is a Robot
Posted 9:26 AM, May 9, 2005 |
I set two alarm clocks to wake me up every weekday morning. I used to have the alarm times staggered, so I’d be alarmed every 4 or 5 minutes. Recently, though, the power went out at my apartment and when I reset the alarms, I didn’t stagger the time, so now they go off about 4 or 5 seconds apart.
This morning, they were both going off, and I hit snooze on one of them, and I simply turned the other one off entirely. I then laid back down.
Then I felt bad.
I felt bad for the alarm clock I had turned off completely.
I’m not making this up, see.
I’ve been reading this book, Cloud Atlas, and the part I’m in now is this interview with this robot who used to serve hamburgers but has since become sentient. There was a part in this interview where he’s talking about how he felt bad being around humans, how they would make him feel bad and different and outcast. And then what do I do? I tell my secondary alarm clock that it’s useless, that it’s ultimate function, its purpose in life, is one that I don’t really need it to fulfill.
I imagine my alarm clock, now, menacingly stamping about my apartment, blaring and buzzing and beeping and probably watching Jerry Springer with the volume turned up all the way, smoking and dropping hot ash on my sofa.
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Mental Health
Posted 3:37 PM, May 5, 2005 |
People are weird about mental health in this country. Like, if my leg hurt for 4 or 6 weeks, like every time I took a step outside I got a sharp pain in my calf, I’d probably go see a doctor and think nothing of it. I’d tell people at work that I was going to go to the doctor. I’d openly complain about how much my leg hurt. I’d even make people carry me around the office, or wheel me.
Maybe not.
But when people hurt their brains, mum’s the word. Can’t let anyone know, man, or they’ll think you’re crazy or nuts or, at the very least, weird and different (which, in itself, isn’t even that bad). When you think about it, if your brain isn’t working right, it really doesn’t make a difference how your legs are functioning. So in a sense, mental health is way more important, but you couldn’t tell it by this damn country.
That’s crazy.
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